POETRY SOMEDAY: G.M. HOPKINS: Haven’t done Poetry Wednesday in a while. But I’ve been reading Hopkins’s juvenilia, and this poem struck me. I think it’s poignant and mysterious. Spring and Death I had a dream. A wondrous thing:It seem’d an evening in the Spring:–A little sickness in the airFrom too much fragrance everywhere: —As I walk’d a stilly wood,Sudden, Death before me stood:In a hollow lush and damp,He seem’d a dismal murky stampOn the flowers that were seenHis charnelhouse-grate ribs... Read more

KITCHEN ADVENTURE: PORK LOIN OF DOOM! OK, so mostly my Kitchen Adventures have turned out well. I’m a confident and generally good cook: I know what I like, and I can tweak recipes to provoke tasty results. But this recipe thwarted and irked me. I expected to spend about an hour cooking it–most of that time taken up with simmering and similar “you can go about your business while the food cooks” stuff. Instead, I spent an hour and a... Read more

Tattoo on the muscle that says “Beware, behave, be mine”;She’ll eat them up for blogwatch, one at a time… Sed Contra is back! Southern Voice Online: “A Farsi linguist, a doctor and an intelligence analyst? Well, at least those aren’t positions that are vital to our national security, right? OK, maybe they are vital, but at least we have scores of new recruits to replace each soldier we lose, right?” (more) Via SRD: University of Pittsburgh researchers have discovered what... Read more

GIRL AVOIDS TRIAL OVER THROWN ROCK: An 11-year-old girl who threw a rock at a boy during a water balloon fight escaped jail time Wednesday on a felony assault with a deadly weapon charge after lawyers worked out a deal in the emotionally charged case. more Sanity prevails. Read more

HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR: It’s that time of year again, when we remember that the United States dropped atomic bombs on two cities in Japan. Shadows were burnt onto the walls. Everything you know about your city–everything you love: Imagine that destroyed. I’m picturing the rose-colored triceratops on the Mall. I’m picturing the row houses on South Capitol Street. I’m picturing the Brotherhood Barber Shop, the three outlets of my favorite Salvadoran restaurant chain (El Tamarindo/Casa Fiesta), the little Brookland valley... Read more

ALL SHALL LOVE ME AND DESPAIR!: I’ve taken this quiz twice now. The first time I came out as Lord Voldemort. This time, apparently (as Lydia Verlauryn would say), I’m Severus Snape. Kickin’. Well you’re a tricky one aren’t you? Nobody quite has you figured out and you’d probably prefer it stayed that way. That said you are a formidable force by anyone’s reckoning, but there is certainly more to you than a frosty exterior and a bitter temper. Lord... Read more

PUT YOUR RING ON A DIFFERENT FINGER: So I just read through a bunch of people talking about how television shows never show deep female friendships. And you know, I’m really sympathetic to that criticism. Because real female friendship is “shade and sweet water” to me, and I can’t imagine my own life without it, and I know for sure that it’s marginalized by mainstream representations. But it did startle me that nowhere in these discussions of women’s friendships on... Read more

MUST-READ: Josh White and Dana Priest have two remarkable stories in the Washington Post this morning. The first recounts how, in February or March of 2002, the President authorized the CIA to recruit and train an Iraqi paramilitary group, code-named the Scorpions, to foment rebellion, conduct sabotage, and help CIA paramilitaries who entered Baghdad and other cities “target buildings and individuals.” Priest and White report an Army investigator’s testimony that “at some point, and it’s not really clear how this... Read more

11-YEAR-OLD GIRL COULD FACE FOUR YEARS IN PRISON FOR THROWING A ROCK: Elijah threw a water balloon at Maribel as she played in the frontyard. From the street, he teased her and called her names. Mad and wet, Maribel told Elijah to leave, then she threw a rock at him, drawing blood just above his left eye. Most examples of this schoolyard staple–boy hits girl, girl hits back–end without arrests, felony charges or electronic monitoring anklets. Then there is the... Read more

WHO’S YOUR DADDY?: Tomorrow evening (Thursday), I’ll be speaking at a Heritage Foundation panel on contemporary fatherhood. It’ll be Pat Fagan on how fathers shape their children’s future relationships, Brad Wilcox on his 2004 Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands, and me on “how marriage makes men.” The panel starts at six, in the Lehman Auditorium of the Heritage Foundation, 214 Massachusetts Ave NE, and it’s free and open to the public. (Heritage is at Union... Read more